Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for another Sunday edition of our Enchanted Sew Along. Are you excited? I certainly am! I truly love sewing together the enchanted figures. This week is one of my favorites - Babette. Babette is French and means - my God is plentiful. It is a very fitting name for the second angel in our series. If you have purchased the pattern, you may have realized that the figures are alphabetized with Agatha and end with Lilly. Each of the figures has her own little story too.That surprise is awaiting you in the
pattern booklet and PDF pattern. You can
purchase both here on Etsy. Please keep in mind, if you purchase the PDF individual pattern, you do not need to buy the booklet unless you absolutely want to have the convenience of printing the
pattern templates directly from your computer. You have the choice.
Before we take a look at Babette, I went ahead and made my Sunkissed Cross blocks and my sashing strips. I got a little confused when looking at my quilt layout. I thought I only needed 20 sashing strips. Following the advice of my friend,
Katrin, I made a total of 31 sashing strips. You can get three sashing sets from one WOF strip. If you are making the quilt below, you will need to cut a minimum of 20 white and 10 purple strips. These will make 30 sashing strips. Use a leftover strip to make the last remaining sashing strip.
Are you just joining for the first time? That's wonderful! We are sewing along together. Each week a new figure from the Enchanted Paper Dolls booklet is highlighted and shown.
I proceeded to make the Sunkissed Cross blocks. These are REALLY fun to make. Directions for quick and easy strip piecing are in the booklet. When I square them up, I line up the 1 3/4" mark with the triangle point on the center on the first two adjoining sides that I will be trimming. I trim two sides - one right after the other to ensure it is square. In the worst case, it will be a parallelogram. I received those nifty little diamond stickers from a friend in a swap. Normally you can just write on your acrylic cutting rulers with an erasable marker, but these are good when showing in demonstrations.
I definitely had some leftover scraps from making the sashing strips and Sunkissed Cross blocks - my own design and creation. I might do a little Seminole piecing with them for the back of the quilt. I am still undecided if I want to make a mini of just Sunkissed Cross blocks.
This time I was right about the amount I needed. There are 20 Sunkissed Crosses.
Now onto Babette. I started making Babette and parts of Celeste as well. When I mocked them up in the quilt, I designed them both with the same dress and wing fabrics. This makes for easy mix and match options with the two figures when their skin colors are the same as well as the wing segments. I made a quick little video showing how you can mix and match the segments. We'll get that up and running soon.
Designing FPP
There is something I would like to mention about designing foundation paper patterns and templates. When sewing Babette together, I kept wondering why I chose the hair construction as shown below on the left side. [Please take a look at the yellow lines.] It started to disturb me when looking at the finished angel wing and using a fairly large print. The fabrics were almost too wild and stood out showing the construction of the block. If I had used the construction on the right (yellow line), the wing segment would have been one complete piece of floral fabric making for a nicer design.
So, I went back to the computer to figure out why I chose this method of sewing the templates. (This might be too too theoretical for you. If you fpp on a regular basis or even write patterns with fpp construction, you might know what I am talking about.) Anyway, the problem comes at the top of the head. Those two little patches of background fabric giving Babette a nice rounded head wouldn't have been possible without excess fpp segments. I couldn't see a way to reduce the amount of segments without having one or two single patches. When I design fpp templates, I try to place at least two patches of fabric on one segment. I try to narrow down the amount of segments as well.
AND this only stands out if you are using some type of large scale print or directional fabric which I mentioned in the beginning, you should not use! I did not follow my own advice! ; ) So I accepted the construction and moved on. What some may not even know, is how much time and thought that is put into designing fpp especially mix and match segments. Sometimes, I think I make it especially harder on myself, because I think about the littlest of details (and problems) and maximum amount of solutions just like those hair segments. I even think about how the "construction" of a block will change the look of the block. Two adjacent fabrics will create a line that will pull your eye into the frame. This may or may not be intentional. It may or may not look good.
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There is a line on Babette's wing that you can omit if you prefer. It is line between segment P4/P8 on the templates. I left this segment in just in case you were mixing with another figure and wanted the extra design element in. (Strong wink). Feel free to skip and add one whole patch of fabric for the upper wing. That is explained in the instructions when extending hair lengths.
The difficulty with this figure will be the lining up on the last section - Wings to the main section. You will have to match up three points - wing top, wrists and wing bottom. To ensure those three points lined up, I basted with larger stitches (2,5) , verified the accuracy, and then sewed with the shorter stitch length (1,5) over the entire seam when they lined up correctly.
All in all, I am extremely happy with Babette. I love her frilly dress and pretty halo. The construction also allows you to fussy cut the main section of her gown. I do love to fussy cut when FPP. Don't by shy and tell us if you discover more fussy cutting patches.
If you would like to make Babette or any other figure, please link up below or on the corresponding post with the figure you have sewn. We all would love to see your version. Feel free to mix and match with the other figures, because that is truly the fun part about these dolls - you can mix and match the segments!
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Take a look at previous posts and see the other figures.
Do you remember I said I was thinking about some prizes? We are going to narrow it down to two prizes:
- Cutest Ever
- Most Unique or Best Use of Mix & Match Templates
We'll talk more about that later. For now, you can link up your Babette below. I look forward to showing you my Celeste next week and seeing yours as well!
Happy quilting!
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Looking for the patterns? Click
here.
